Poetry as hybrid pedagogy in mental health nurse education

Abstract

IntroductionPoetry has emerged as a significant resource in nurse education in recent times. Over the last four years for example, this journal has hosted a number research and theoreticalconceptual papers that discuss and evaluate the use of poetry in undergraduate nurse curricula. In these papers, their authors express the explicit aim of advancing nurse education through helping students to explore their feelings about practice issues over a range of contexts. Included among these are reflective writing (Coleman and Willis, 2015), compassionate practice (Curtis, 2013), the development of emotional intelligence (Jack, 2015), the promotion of liberal nurse education (McKie, 2012) and clinical practice artistry (Chan, 2014), and the use of poetry to remove barriers to perception (Rolfe, 2012). From a related but qualitatively different emerging contemporary perspective, our aim in this paper is to promote poetry as hybrid pedagogy in mental health nurse education. We do so in order to challenge longstanding epistemological assumptions guiding aspects of the conventional range, content and delivery of the mental health nursing curriculum. We wish to highlight the value of adding the poetic work in context, of academics who have hybrid, 'hyphenated' identities to this curriculum. In our case, this is reflected in the fact that we 2 explicitly teach and write from the standpoint position of mental health/nurse lecturers-exmental health professionals-survivors of the UK psychiatric system (Grant et al., 2015a).We will explore this topic area further and in a more nuanced way in this current paper. In specifically focusing on poetry as hybrid pedagogy, one of our own co-written and previously unpublished poems will be used in a theoretical and analytical context to advance our argument for the use of this approach in mental health nurse education. In the final section of our paper, our attention will turn to some of the benefits and one possible drawback for this approach, emerging from our discussion. Poetry as hybrid pedagogyAs scholars with a background in healthcare, and nurse and mental health nurse education, we believe that poetry has great potential for developing pedagogic practice in undergraduate teaching. Like most of the colleagues we have worked with, we have throughout our academic careers generally conformed to an implicitly accepted norm of presenting new knowledge in prose narrative form. However, we are mindful of an argument that has been prescient for over two decades. This is that prose writing as an epistemological convention for conveying knowledge conceals an unexamined code regarding its sufficiency for how knowledge in general should or could be presented (Richardson, 1993).This assumed sufficiency has not gone unchallenged. As a way of seeing through and beyond the knowledge conveyed in prose form, Richardson (1993, p4) asserted that poetry touches 3 readers in embodied rather than propositional or cognitive ways, implicitly inviting them to '…vicariously experience the self-reflexive and...

Eksistensielle stormar, toreskyer og hus med rolege hav: ei vitskapeleg og poetisk utforsking av sosial støtte i psykisk helsearbeid

“…Poesi som analysemetode Å bruke poesi som analysemetode og verktøy betyr at ein kan finne nye innsikter i materialet -og at ein i beste fall kan presentere erfaringar og funn på ein måte som tek oss gjennom og forbi kunnskap formidla i (sak)prosaisk form (Short & Grant, 2016). Poesien kan ofte hjelpe oss til å føle erfaringane knytt til empirien meir direkte, og til dømes formidle marginale posisjonar (Faulkner, 2016).…”

Researching outside the box: Welcoming innovative qualitative inquiry to nurse education today

“…It discourages nurse educators and their students from exploring and gaining expertise in innovative approaches and practices that inherently trouble received and perpetuated wisdom, around what counts as qualitative inquiry and how it should be presented (Short and Grant, 2016;Grant et al, 2013). 'Innovation' in this context does not imply a lack of theoretical-and paradigm appropriate rigour.…”

“…This includes writing that proceeds from narrative and autoethnographic inquiry as poetry (eg Galvin and Prendergast, 2016;Pithouse-Morgan, 2016;Short and Grant, 2016;Tilley-Lubbs, 2011), fiction (eg Caine et al 2016Henson 2016), and ideological critique of pedagogic practices (Grant and Radcliffe, 2015).…”

“…An example of my own cowritten work which hopefully illustrates this has recently been published in NET as a 'Contemporary Issue' (Short and Grant, 2016). However, work such as this needs a more secure future home in the journal as original research.…”